Ice Giant
The event started on December 26, 2013 and lasts for 14 days. It is similar to the Wet Willy event. It entices people to cooperate online to beat a yeti-like beast, an Ice Giant. Help Wanted! In-game description: Your help is urgently needed! The Ice Giant has stolen all the Christmas presents. Let's teach the scoundrel a lesson and bring the holiday back to people! Take part in at least one battle and you will get a special award containing these items: *5 *Free repair scroll *Medium time scroll (x2) * Zapping information Every 5 minutes a special tourist (later referred to as the peddler) will appear. In exchange for 5 zaps from your energy bar he will provide you with a weapon to use against that Ice Giant. He also drops some icicles (usually 3 of them), needed to attack the giant. As the game states, the icicles are required in order to lure the beast near enough your position to attack it as the monster loves eating icicles. The giant has a total of 5000 damage points and the time you have to defeat it is 6 hours. Weapons You can use 6 different weapons to attack Ice Giant: Joining the battle You can do this in several ways. *Starting a battle yourself: it is difficult if you do not have many piastres to spend and are not eager to spend approximately 6 hours keeping an eye on the battle. However, users report the awards for "lone striders" are the best. Your choice. *Finding an ongoing battle: instead of starting your own battle, you can search the currently ongoing ones and try to join one. Do this by clicking on "Ongoing battles" button (right side of the event's screen). You can see how much energy the enemy giant has (the number listed on the right side from the heart symbol), how many people are currently fighting alongside (up to 5, when their number reaches 5, nobody can join) and the time left until the giant wins if you do not beat it down (the maximum number you can see is 5 hours 59 minutes, because each battle can take up to 6 hours). *Accepting an invitation from a friend: when you participate in a battle and your crew is smaller than 5 people, you can invite your friends by clicking "Invite" button below the giant's icon and choosing people from the list that opens up afterwards. Remember that if you start a battle yourself and you do not want to have the possible crew limited to friends only, you need to untick the "Accept friends only" button (a small icon in the lower right corner on the screen). When you have already joined a battle you did not start yourself, you can only invite your friends. Reward distribution In case the crew wins, everybody gets so-called Christmas Presents, some experience and, in case of the first 3 places (that are marked with star-shaped medals) a certain amount of additional awards: *When Ice Giant is defeated 2500 XP is divided on the players participating. If a player does 50% of the damage he will get 1250 XP, a player doing 10% of the damage will get 250 XP and so on. *1st place: every 20 minutes the giant gives you a pile of Christmas Presents; the tribute time lasts 2,5 hours. the 1st place also gets 3 piastres - and a bunch of experience points. *2nd place: every 20 minutes the giant gives you a pile of Christmas Presents; the tribute time lasts 1,5 hours. *3rd place: every 20 minutes the giant gives you a pile of Christmas Presents; the tribute time lasts 50 minutes. *4th place: a single pile of Christmas Presents *5th place: a single pile of Christmas Presents (this time called Pacifist Chest, which contains only 1 shell, 1 pearl and 1 collect all profit scroll; this pack's contents do not change) If the part loses, everybody will get some experience depending on how many damage points you got. Christmas Presents' contents If you have received a pile of Christmas Presents, please add it to the table or let us know the contents in the comments. Also do so in case you see a different amount of something in the contents. Damage per weapon type per battle Let's try to calculate how much damage can each weapon type do in the 6 hours deadline. It's rather easy, we just need to divide the deadline (6 hours) by the cool-down of a certain weapon and multiply it by its damage. To make sure we get an easy to compare score, we're going to use minutes as our unit. So forget about 6 hours - we use 360 minutes (6 hours is 6 x 60 minutes). *Petards: 360 / 60 * 20 = 6 * 20 = 120 (total damage) *Firecracker: 360 / 30 * 23 = 12 * 23 = 276 (total damage) *Fireworks: 360 / 15 * 33 = 24 * 33 = 792 (total damage) *Wooden Sword: 360 / 3 * 100 = 120 * 100 = 12,000 (total damage) *Gun with Suction Cups: 360 / 2 * 320 = 180 * 320 = 57,600 (total damage) *Snow Catapult: 360 / 0,5 * 570 = 720 * 570 = 410,400 (total damage) Now let's see how can we minimize the costs of winning a battle ALONE (if there's a whole crew involved, the costs for a single player are diminished). We can see that in 6 hours, Petards can be used 6 times. However, this isn't so clear - we need to also take into consideration the fact we have to accept EVERY use of each weapon. In other words, we cannot make it reload itself until we run out of this weapon type. This takes time. No matter how fast you click, you're bound to lose at least a few seconds and the weapon won't reload to its extent for the last time. Therefore let's say we can use 5 Petards. Now it makes sense! As the costs of weapons differ from level to level, you have to multiply this score by the cost you have. I'm making those calculations on level 34, so for me, the cost of Petards is $22,500. The total of damage I can cause with Petards is 5 * 20 = 100, so the total cost of this is $22,500 * 5 = $112,500. The same calculations (with only the data differing) apply to all levels. Tips *Before you attack, if you can, try to let some fellow players know you want to start a battle. It makes the whole affair much more probable to win if you all do not have to chase each other on the "Ongoing battles" page. It is allowed to advertise for a battle in the comments section below this page. But for battles only, NO FRIEND REQUESTS! *Try to keep at least 5 energy zaps for the peddler selling weapons for zaps - it is the easiest way to get some weapons and he also drops Icicle (usually 3 of them), which are needed to start a battle (it has nothing to do with real friends). If you don't have enough zaps to take down that the peddler selling weapons that is currently on your island and about to disappear, take note of how much time you need to recharge and then click on the Ice Giant. A new window opens and as a result all movement of the peddler is suspended but your energy bar will continue to recharge. Wait for the amount of time to pass to recharge your energy zaps, close the Ice Giant window and you will find the peddler in the same spot ready to be zapped. *You need 10 icicles to start a battle. They are given every time you accept the peddler's offer. Alternatively, you can buy them for 1 piastre each from the resource tab, but it is definitely not a good idea in comparison to the price. *If the crew consists of people on levels that vary drastically, if you are okay with accepting smaller awards (in other words, you focus on winning as many battles as possible in order to gain awards connected with this), it would seem profitable for all - in a long run - that the person possessing some free-to-spend piastres may keep an eye on the battle and even be in charge of pumping the necessary high-end weapons into the game in the critical moment. This requires some contact between the players, though, but again, the strategy seems worth trying. *If you try to join the battle whose crew has already lowered the Giant's health below 2000, you are likely to get a warning "This was a great battle! Too bad you weren't there!". It is suspected as a way to lure as many people as possible into either starting their own battles (which usually requires spending some piastres or at least a lot of time and money for buying Petards, Firecrackers and Fireworks) or engaging in losing ones. Related Special Awards Possible rewards Here you can see all stuff that can be contained in piles of Christmas Presents. It is listed in no strict order and it is not grouped into chests. For listing all the contents as they are grouped, see "Christmas Presents' Contents" section. Category:Special Events